Blake Crouch - Dark Matter

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright 2016 by Blake Crouch All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. crownpublishing.com CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for the excerpt from Burnt Norton from FOUR QUARTETS by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company; copyright renewed 1964 by T. S. Eliot.

Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All right reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Crouch, Blake, author. Title: Dark matter : a novel / by Blake Crouch. Description: First edition. | Suspense fiction. | Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3603.R68 D37 2016 | DDC 813/.6dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040107 Hardcover ISBN9781101904220 ebook ISBN9781101904237 International Edition ISBN9780451496416 Title page and chapter opener images: agsandrew/Shutterstock Cover design by Christopher Brand v4.1 ep Contents For anyone who has wondered what their life might look like at the end of the road not taken. What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never opened. T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton I love Thursday nights. They have a feel to them thats outside of time.

Its our tradition, just the three of usfamily night. My son, Charlie, is sitting at the table, drawing on a sketch pad. Hes almost fifteen. The kid grew two inches over the summer, and hes as tall as I am now. I turn away from the onion Im julienning, ask, Can I see? He holds up the pad, shows me a mountain range that looks like something on another planet. I say, Love that.

Just for fun? Class project. Due tomorrow. Then get back to it, Mr. Last Minute. Standing happy and slightly drunk in my kitchen, Im unaware that tonight is the end of all of this. The end of everything I know, everything I love.

No one tells you its all about to change, to be taken away. Theres no proximity alert, no indication that youre standing on the precipice. And maybe thats what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when youre least expecting it. No time to flinch or brace. The track lights shine on the surface of my wine, and the onion is beginning to sting my eyes.

Thelonious Monk spins on the old turntable in the den. Theres a richness to the analog recording I can never get enough of, especially the crackle of static between tracks. The den is filled with stacks and stacks of rare vinyl that I keep telling myself Ill get around to organizing one of these days. My wife, Daniela, sits on the kitchen island, swirling her almost-empty wineglass in one hand and holding her phone in the other. She feels my stare and grins without looking up from the screen. I know, she says.

Im violating the cardinal rule of family night. Whats so important? I ask. She levels her dark, Spanish eyes on mine. Nothing. I walk over to her, take the phone gently out of her hand, and set it on the countertop. You could start the pasta, I say.

I prefer to watch you cook. Yeah? Quieter: Turns you on, huh? No, its just more fun to drink and do nothing. Her breath is wine-sweet, and she has one of those smiles that seem architecturally impossible. It still slays me. I polish off my glass. We should open more wine, right? It would be stupid not to.

As I liberate the cork from a new bottle, she picks her phone back up and shows me the screen. I was reading Chicago Magazine s review of Marsha Altmans show. Were they kind? Yeah, its basically a love letter. Good for her. I always thought She lets the sentence die, but I know where it was headed. Fifteen years ago, before we met, Daniela was a comer to Chicagos art scene.

She had a studio in Bucktown, showed her work in a half-dozen galleries, and had just lined up her first solo exhibition in New York. Then came life. Me. Charlie. A bout of crippling postpartum depression. Derailment.

Now she teaches private art lessons to middle-grade students. Its not that Im not happy for her. I mean, shes brilliant, she deserves it all. I say, If it makes you feel any better, Ryan Holder just won the Pavia Prize. Whats that? A multidisciplinary award given for achievements in the life and physical sciences. Ryan won for his work in neuroscience.

Is it a big deal? Million dollars. Accolades. Opens the floodgates to grant money. Hotter TAs? Obviously thats the real prize. He invited me to a little informal celebration tonight, but I passed. Why? Because its our night.

You should go. Id really rather not. Daniela lifts her empty glass. So what youre saying is, we both have good reason to drink a lot of wine tonight. I kiss her, and then pour generously from the newly opened bottle. You couldve won that prize, Daniela says.

You couldve owned this citys art scene. But we did this. She gestures at the high-ceilinged expanse of our brownstone. I bought it pre-Daniela with an inheritance. And we did that, she says, pointing to Charlie as he sketches with a beautiful intensity that reminds me of Daniela when shes absorbed in a painting. Its a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager.

One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But Im not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son.

He means everything to me. And yet, I cant escape the feeling that Im failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective. I move to the cabinet beside the sink, open it, and start hunting for a box of fettuccine. Daniela turns to Charlie, says, Your father could have won the Nobel. I laugh.

Thats possibly an exaggeration. Charlie, dont be fooled. Hes a genius. Youre sweet, I say. And a little drunk. Its true, and you know it.

Science is less advanced because you love your family. I can only smile. When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole. Your father said to me one nightnever forget itthat pure research is life-consuming. He said For a moment, and to my surprise, emotion overtakes her. Her eyes mist, and she shakes her head like she always does when shes about to cry.

At the last second, she rallies, pushes through. He said, Daniela, on my deathbed I would rather have memories of you than of a cold, sterile lab. I look at Charlie, catch him rolling his eyes as he sketches. Probably embarrassed by our display of parental melodrama. I stare into the cabinet and wait for the ache in my throat to go away. When it does, I grab the pasta and close the door.

Daniela drinks her wine. Charlie draws. The moment passes. Wheres Ryans party? Daniela asks. Village Tap. Thats your bar, Jason.

So? She comes over, takes the box of pasta out of my hand. Go have a drink with your old college buddy. Tell him youre proud of him. Head held high. Tell him I said congrats. I will not tell him you said congrats.